Ramen Heads is a ninety-three minute documentary about the best ramen shops in Japan, the people who make the ramen and how they do it, the history of ramen, and the logistics of running the business. The narrator and all the subjects of the film are Japanese so unless you speak Japanese, bring your reading glasses. Read no further if you love ramen and know a ton about it because I am a complete acolyte.
I saw the preview for Ramen Heads and thought it would be the easiest introduction to the food phenomenon since I have failed myself in the real world. I’m an American, and the only ramen that I’ve had are those cheap store-bought versions filled with sodium that you eat when you don’t have a lot of money and beef flavoring sounds appealing and more affordable than actual beef. There is a ramen shop nearby, but I have not visited it yet. Because I am usually famished whenever I eat, I avoid warm liquids such as soups or beverages. I never wait long enough to let it cool and always burn myself, which ruins your ability to really appreciate the food since I’ve temporarily destroyed my taste buds. If I do wait long enough, it is usually on the side of too cold to taste what it was originally intended to taste like so I shouldn’t have bothered. I don’t have this problem with solid food. So to visit this shop, I have to go when I’m not too hungry, but hungry enough to go outside and wait on line, which so far is never, but I am aware that I’m missing out. I have tried peer pressure, but the friends who are interested in the shop are more interested in more conventional restaurants that don’t involve lines around the block and take reservations. One day!
Mom was also interested in this documentary. We love food and watch cooking competition shows together, but when one of those isn’t currently airing, we’ll settle for a cooking show or just a show about food. Unfortunately she couldn’t keep up with the subtitles so it was a waste of her time so consider yourself warned if you are not a fast reader.
Unless you’re really interested in ramen or plan to visit Japan to go to these shops in person, you should probably skip Ramen Heads. I enjoyed it, but while the documentary’s narrative definitely had a structure and rhythm, it did not quite work for me as an entry point into that world though I definitely still managed to learn more than when I came in. I prefer linear timelines—start from the beginning then work your way to the present whereas the filmmaker uses personalities as the entry point then uses individuals to go deeper into ramen, but spends time with the personalities proportionate to how good the shop owner is at his or her craft. The only problem is that what is good is arbitrary and subjective. Then because the filmmakers don’t go into such depth with the other shop owners, there is no way to compare and contrast logistics in a way that can help the viewer decide for him or herself which techniques he or she would prefer.
Ramen Heads predominantly focuses on Osamu Tomita, who was awarded The Best Ramen of the Year award, so he does seem to be a solid rock to build your film around, but the film subsequently shows who is the best in different types of ramen and implies that the differences are so great and each individual shop owner is so notable in his or her area that there can’t only be one. Clearly Tomita is the rock star of the group so he would be more appealing as the subject of any film, but once I realized that the documentary was not just about him, I wished that it was structured differently.
Ramen Heads uses Tomita as a gateway to understanding the schedule of a ramen shop, how Tomita makes the ramen, provides a mini biography of Tomita’s life, how the shop functions internally and externally to keep up with demand. It is only after about four other shop owners are comparatively briefly profiled and distinguished from Tomita that the documentary gives us a history of how ramen got started, became popular and changed the Japanese culinary world. Then it returns to being a profile of Tomita as a person: his extracurricular activities, his inspiration and his collaboration with other ramen chefs in honor of his tenth anniversary.
I do wish that earlier in Ramen Heads, there were more of an explanation regarding the different types of ramen cooking styles. Tomita likes to throw in as much as possible. Touka prefers to subtract and aims for a more delicate appeal and is salt based, a concept that I don’t understand because isn’t everything salt-based. Hayama works with a sardine base and brings a physicality to his cooking absent from everyone else’s style. Ichifuku, a woman, dominates the miso based ramen arena. Fukuju has the longest running shop that has existed for generations and still uses the same space and tools. (These names are based on my notes from the subtitles so apologies for any misspellings or inaccuracies.)
If I could change anything about Ramen Heads, it would be the music. The fanfare is too grandiose and over powering for the subject matter and should have been subtler. It is practically its own character aggressively elbowing for more room at the table instead of enhancing the experience. It made the documentary appear as if it was trying too hard, and it was a complete turnoff. I began to feel as if I was watching a commercial. It is also odd that the narrator is not listed in the credits on IMDb, which makes me retroactively wish that I had paid closer attention to the credits at the end of the film. Perhaps the style makes sense, and something was lost in translation—a tongue in cheek approach to tacitly acknowledge that they are making something usually taken for granted and placing it on a pedestal?
While I enjoyed Ramen Heads, I would not recommend this film to someone like me, with no knowledge of ramen, and if you hate subtitles, definitely stay away. You’ll lose interest fairly early.
